Servants of Duty
by Zenzao
Summary: The life of a Royal Knight is not an easy one. Every day, another swarm of viral threats arise and haunt the continents. Every day, they are dispatched to protect the sanctity of data and vaccine life, as ordained by Yggdrasil's first laws. And every day... Full Summary inside. Multiple continuum theory- all Knights originate singularly in their home dimension.
1. Prologue - First Meetings among Madmen

_Summary_: The life of a Royal Knight is not an easy one. Every day, another swarm of viral threats arise and haunt the continents. Every day, they are dispatched to protect the sanctity of data and vaccine life, as ordained by Yggdrasil's first laws. And every day, they chance an encounter with the lesser gods and fallen angels that could ignite the sparks of anarchy and another war of succession. They are but servants to the duty they were founded to complete.

**Servants of Duty**  
**_Prologue_**

Heavy footfalls rang along the clear, expansive walls as Omegamon paced back and forth before the central monitor to the north, the maw of his left-hand continually clenching and releasing.

Around him, several of his fellow newly-formed Knights argued over origins, hierarchy, type, and _looks_ of all things, overlapping so often that it was impossible for him to discern where any one point began in the cacophony of noise. It was clear to him that this inability to see past their differences and cooperate together without an exacting-order from the Founder or Destined Alpha-of-the-pack would destroy them from the inside-out.

_Enough is enough_, the temporarily-assigned commander thought, and flicked loose the Grey Sword lodged within the depths of his left hand with a keening groan. The noise of it would have been enough to draw eyes even through their tempered voices even before he stabbed it into the floor, rupturing the crystal panels and sending shock-waves trembling beneath their feet for several meters around.

When Omegamon lifted his gaze from his sword the rest of their own eyes had fallen upon him, and he slowly stood upright again and drew the weathered-tip of his blade free.

"Will we know no measure of trust upon this world?" His voice echoed with the disjointed flavors of those who had joggressed together, two equally disgusted tones overlaid as one.

"Our allies are those alone who fill in this sacred antechamber, and but three others besides; and they are both _gone_ and _missing_! All the rest are either our enemies or else fall beneath our range of protection! If we will not put aside our differences and come together, than I disband these Royal Knights by the authority of our Founder," he swore furiously, leveling his sword at Examon, Gankoomon and Dynasmon, then toward Craniummon and Lord Knightmon, to Duftmon and Dukemon, and lastly to Magnamon and Ulforce V-dramon. The only member to avoid his blade was Sleipmon, who had also held his tongue to that point.

And then he spoke up, stepping forward.

"Would you, now?" He asked mildly, glancing left and right at his fellow Knights. "And what would you do in the absence of our supposed-order?"

Omegamon's eyes glimmered as his sword retracted back into his arm, and a shine began to radiate outward from his body. It pained him, _horrified _him, to do this before those who he was meant to respect and be respected by in turn, but he had already determined his course of action the moment he released the Grey Sword. There would be no further altercations between them all; if they would not set aside arms willingly, then he would show them a power to cow even the fiercest spirit.

And run it through afterward.

The _Omega InForce_ suffusing his form triggered the hidden genome tainting his core, and in a rush of blinding white light and an abrupt whirlwind of energy, he suddenly expanded upward another six inches, and _sharpened_, _hardened_, and _refined_ his stance and figure until he was all jagged lines and power incarnate.

"_Omegamon X_," he breathed out in an heavier tone that fused his twin voices into a single, striking note.

Sleipmon hastily stepped back as that blade, sleeker and reflecting a deadly gleam, thrust forward again and slit the very air before its path. The radiant runes etched into its surface read out a single ominous warning - _All Delete_.

"I will _eradicate_ all who would stand in our way - and if I must forge alone to exact the orders passed down by Yggdrasil, than I shall expand my focus to you all in the aftermath to come." He swore with complete honesty. "Be done of your issues when I return, or else flee now in my wake."

A wide path split open before him as the other Knights stepped aside, and silence hung in the air as he departed through the doorway to the Deep Savers server to hunt after their missing members.

Magnamon was the first to break the uneasily quiet, releasing a shrill whistle and a heavy breath.

"_Whoa_. I wonder what kind of figure we'd have cut in _Paladin Mode_ with _that_ kind of Omegamon in the fight against Armagemon?"

Heads turned to focus upon him and a number of expressions stared, from doubting to dismay, haughty and grave, and even into open hostility at his words. The enhanced-Armor II shrugged and offered an explanation.

"I wasn't born this way, y'know. The suffusion of power maintaining my evolution was only awoken with the aide of Daisuke and Ken, and Wormmon too."

"Hold thy troublesome tongue, agent of _Miracles_," Dukemon exclaimed wearily. "We've enough ire ere false pride clouded us further."

"I dunno, _your highness._ I think we could use a bit more, actually." Magnamon inclined his head with an unseen smirk - he could _feel_ something in the environment that encouraged him to continue speaking. "I've seen humans settle their issues this way before, and I'm inclined to follow it through to blows if that's what it takes to establish our pecking-order."

A soft whistle barely warned him of the stroke before Lord Knightmon's first hardened ribbon struck at the back of his head. A violent _clang_ echoed along the walls as the blow struck true, and his head and body rocked forward, sending him stumbling a few steps before crashing into the wall and leaning against it, his arms slack around his sides.

"What say you now, child?" She demanded haughtily.

A rough laugh answered, starting in the pit of his gut and climbing steadily into his throat, where it grew in intensity before rushing out in a wild burst of cackling. "Ahahahah! Ah, that hurts!" The darkness around his eyes vanished as he blinked them back open again, and as he turned around he spoke up around his fit of ill humor. "Ah, but doesn't it help to get your tensions out?"

By the time he had finished his sentence and was facing her fully again, the rigidity of her stance warned of the abrupt seven-ribbon strike an instant before it erupted across the space.

His laughter quieted but did not fade away as he was slammed up against the crystalline panes over and over again. For seven seconds her assault drove into his figure without halting, until Craniummon finally stirred and slashed a suddenly-materialized spear down and through the ribbons between them, sending the tattered shards to crash along the ground.

Fragments of Magnamon's own armor met them on the way down. Blood dripped off of his lips, and several slash marks that ran deeply into his lower abdomen and stomach to spill even more. But he choked out a rasping chuckle, shuddering as it agitated his wounds. "Ahahahah! Ah, Qinglongmon beyond!" He spat a dollop into the hole where Omegamon's sword had rested, wiping his mouth on the back of one shaking arm. "Do you feel any better now?!"

Lord Knightmon was breathing harder than he was, tensed to continue her attack if that was what it took to shut him up, but Craniummon reached out to grip one wrist tightly even as Dukemon warily positioned his Aegis shield to defend him.

"Are you _mad_?" the latter Ultimate asked sharply.

Before their eyes a flash of faint golden light illuminated the _Crest_ of _Miracles_ ingrained into Magnamon's armor. The same light flickered like a thousand tiny motes across his gashes and resolved them into faint, puckered scars wherever they passed, before finally settling into perfectly replicated plates again.

Dukemon retreated a step amidst a quiet rustle, the sudden intake of several masked-breaths throughout the room.

With a final mouthful of blood spilled across the previously-immaculate floor, Magnamon spoke up with the subsiding of his laughter.

"_Mad_? Do you see what happened thanks to mere words?" The glow suffused the depths of his pupils and gave an unearthly, magnanimous presence despite his hunched over posture. He slowly stood upright and smiled again before the motes of energy spread over his face and repaired the last piece of armor.

"That's no less than two of us willing to take action for the sake of another, and I'd say that's a pretty good start on unifying our differences."

* * *

/**END Prologue.**

So, just what is this, exactly? It's an original attempt to depict the Royal Knights, bringing them all together from one view or another that we've had throughout all of the years - Zeromaru the Ulforce V-dramon, Daisuke's Veemon/Magnamon, Omegamon/X from the X Evolution movie, and further.

Not all of them come from the anime/manga/games, however. Dukemon for example is just a mode-changed MedievalDukemon out of the Witchelny dimension rather than Guilmon out of Tamers, and neither Dynasmon or Lord Knightmon are from the Frontier universe. Sleipmon, Craniummon, and/or Duftmon may have come from Savers, however that is currently still being decided on which - if any of them - it would be.

This is intended to be Magnamon-centric in the time ahead. His viewpoint is the one that I've written most of the scenes so far from, but that doesn't mean that we won't focus upon the others in due time.

So! Thanks for your time. And to any of my regular readers shaking their heads at yet another story cropping up, well, this isn't exactly something new; I've been writing it in my space time for the better part of a year or so. Scraps of _Arda_, _Fallen King_,_ Curse_, and_ last Dragonrider_ are all contending with my attention as I go back over my writings.


	2. Chapter 1: Impossible is Nothing

Golden armor boiled and peeled, where it had not already rotted-through or buckled and cracked apart. The last dregs of pale light-motes leaked free and were evaporated upon the terrible breezes gusting across the scoured land.

Accompanying the steady destruction of his form were dozens of dewdrops of blood, dripping out of scratches and the rarer shallow cut beginning with his ears and ending at his toes. Even with all of the faded scars that he bore from throughout the years of combat and training, the mess of crisscrossing wounds presented from this one clash alone outnumbered them two-to-one.

Another great screech shook the air and shuddered the ground, and in a splatter of dissolving gold, the last shred of armor to his name broiled free and left him garbed in only his light azure flesh. It was very _thick_ flesh, true, and with stubborn bones underneath that refused to crack so easily, but he couldn't suppress a wince that passed through his shoulders afterward, as he lowered both hands from over his ears and stared wryly across the channel of ocean water between himself and his foe.

"Why is it that I _always_ get saddled up with the unattainable victories, huh?" The dragon-man retroactively questioned Yggdrasil, dashing aside and clamping his hands to his ears once more as the black-cloaked beast in the skies threw open its upper-mouth and trilled a noise to vaporize lesser-warriors.

The landscape that he had just occupied was reduced to dust for a quarter of a mile down, if only scant feet wide, limiting his already diminished and precarious position to a scant few sections of steady plot here and there. He couldn't hover without the thrusters from his armor, let alone hope to fly.

Inscribed into the flesh just beneath his belly, a dull symbol flickered with the same hue of light that he was supposed to invoke just by _being_, but despite his upbeat attitude, he certainly did not feel very well protected by the power of _Miracles _at that moment.

"C'mon then, ugly! I've got other super-villains to eradicate before lunch!"

To his satisfaction and despite the distance between them, he saw Gulfmon's eyes thin to even further slits than they had been before. Immediately afterward the corrupted Ultimate screamed and unfurled the spiny teeth within its lower-maw, ejecting a trio of dark-matter meteorites toward his position.

_Way to go, loudmouth!_ He thought as he tucked into a barrel roll and dove down into the very pit that had just been scoured open moments before.

Unlike the noise, which he could ignore with a little will, those burning shots were another matter altogether. They pitched down and eroded the world in their wake, drilling through the dirt without relenting or slowing in the slightest.

He suspected they would eventually come out the other side of the world and give some poor Adult a terrifying surprise for the few moments that he or she survived the radiation, but he intended to be over and done with his opponent well before that happened, which _should_ deny the connection that kept them active.

And if that failed... well, he would just have to find a way to somehow pull apart the volatile energy without rendering the planet in half.

_Though I suppose even _that_ isn't outside of Yggdrasil's __capabilities to patch up._

The glow of his symbol flickered again and finally solidified as his convictions were reaffirmed.

_"_Looks like I've found my motivation_,_" he said aloud, grinning widely as energy that had previously been diluted and drained away with the loss of his armor began to bubble up from within his veins anew.

The rents in his flesh flickered and were sealed up in moments, adding to the horrific array of pale white-pink scars encompassing his blue flesh. With a thought he drew his armor back into manifestation and kept the brilliant sheen engrossed across it, shielding himself from Gulfmon's _Dead Scream_ again.

"Now we're cooking with fire, baby," Magnamon cheered softly before turning his head up into the sky. He satisfaction lasted only as long as it took to find himself staring down the sight of the charging Ultimate. Another rush of dark-matter streaked down, and he leapt up into the air to meet it, feeling his aura gathering almost unconsciously.

"_Light Aura Barrier_!" he ordered, and the glow amplified as it lifted free a quarter of an inch, lengthening out before solidifying into hard-light matter.

Neither slowed down. And inverse to what had happened prior, showers of black energy splintered and rained down, taking on a white-hot glow from within before flashing and evaporating as he blew through it like a molten pillar.

The surface of his aura was hardly scuffed in passing. What minimal damage there was - a pockmarked surface less than a quarter inch down - repaired in the age-old dazzle of faint lightning as he carried onward.

Gulfmon's gaze thinned to almost-non existent slits as it roared in fury.

Magnamon screamed right back at it as blood drizzled out of his ruptured eardrums, but his boosters compensated for the abrupt loss of equilibrium and kept him on a straight-course toward the opponent. And in the throbbing silence he concentrated and yelled out his counter-stroke to finish the wretched Virus once and for all, flicking his blue gaze over one shoulder and thrusting a single hand back the way he had come in the same instance.

"_Extreme Jihad!_"

The light shrouded about his being released in an dual-explosion of energy, speeding mostly ahead while a smaller surge erupted downward.

The former latched onto Gulfmon, bonding to the undead flesh and vaccinating it all but instantaneously; the fell thing barely had a moment to process what was happening as the last molecule that represented who and what Gulfmon was, to the last enzyme that gave him his power and form, was scanned and found lacking, and purged from the system.

With a gurgling roar, his code flashed into being an instant before his form ceased to be, leaving behind a void in the air encased within the radiant glow.

It pulsated, and expanded to double its initial size, but in a heartbeat it had shrunk back down and quadrupled again with a burning flash that nearly blinded Magnamon with the intensity and nearness. Heat emanated out of the hard-light that remained attached, scorching the air for a dozen feet around, but the last-ditch effort initiated as Gulfmon was instantaneously reduced backwards to Mephismon, and then to Apocalymon, the attempt to eradicate the known world with its _Total Annihilation_, was contained and shunted into the gap between time and space.

Exhausted almost beyond reason, Magnamon fell out of the sky and began to rocket after the first set of dark-matter meteors. Even if his attack failed to reach them in time, he would catch up eventually and ensure the threat was _over_ before he blacked out from exhaustion.

* * *

**/END Chapter One.**

This chapter, when coupled with the prologue before it, are both the farthest-ahead and farthest-back segments to the story as it stands. Most chapters between will probably be as short as this, but others might actually make it to a few thousand words depending on the subject.


End file.
